spin

(It should be me apologizing. It's just a personal foible: I'll tend to read a cigarette packet if put in front of me.)


spin

Clivedurdle

I thought Constantine, Arius and Eusebius were all Arians. Someone please show me as wrong about this.

Was this not a live issue until Ambrose in 380 imposed the catholic view?

Clivedurdle

And I think Constantine is badly being misrepresented - his freedom of religion charter was revolutionary but contained a fatal flaw - you cannot include fascist type catholic ideologies in freedom of religion edicts because they corrupt them by saying theirs is the only way.

More and more I see xianity as a deliberate syncretic merging of paganism and Judaism - Victory and the pagan temples were not meant to have been torn down.

This afternoon I have been into the Anglican Church of Castleton, Derbyshire, where they have an annual xmas tree festival - with about twenty xmas trees around the church - that is actually representing what what xianity is!

Clivedurdle

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/g...p/aa082499.htm

The Trinitarian bishops prevailed. Emperor Constantine was not himself a Christian. Despite this, he had recently made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. This made heresy akin to revolt, so Constantine exiled the excommunicated Arius to Illyria.Constantine's friend Eusebius, who eventually withdrew his objection, but still wouldn't sign the statement of faith, and a neighboring bishop, Theognis, were also exiled -- to Gaul. Constantine reversed his opinion about the Arian heresy, and had both exiled bishops reinstated three years later (in 328). At the same time, Arius was recalled from exile.
Constantine's sister and Eusebius worked on the emperor to obtain reinstatement for Arius, and they would have succeeded, if Arius hadn't suddenly died - by poisoning, probably, or, as some prefer to believe, by divine intervention.
Arianism regained momentum and survived until the reigns of Gratian and Theodosius, at which time, St. Ambrose set to work stamping it out

J-D

I think the backing of Theodosius for the Catholic/Orthodox/Nicene position was politically significant.

mountainman

Dear J-D,

We have Eusebius admitting that the pagans were writing a satire of the canon, in which Pontius Pilate asserts Jesus heals via the powers of Asclepius. Are you about to argue that this is not a pagan satire?

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Clivedurdle,

Empty your head of christianity and then imagine Arianism as pagan resistance to an unknown thing called christianity, which Constantine had found under some rock near the Tiber. Imagine Arianism as non-christian resistance the new official State Monotheistic Roman religion which Constantine decided was to be embraced by his empire. Ardashir had implemented a centralised state monotheistic religion in Persia one hundred years earlier, and the persians had trounced the Romans since that time.

Monotheism was good for morale, if the Persian history was examined, and so we all know Constantine went down that path. What we do not know is how it was exactly received in the greel speaking empire amidst the pagan academics who were still busily engaged in preserving Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, Galen, Apollonius of Tyana, Marcus Aurelius, Philostratus, Plotinus, etc, etc, etc.

Arianism is the name given to the pagan resistance (which was at one stage focussed on the person of Arius of Alexandria (a logician), and specifically his WORDS which are recorded at the council of Nicaea) to the state religion and monotheism of christianity by the state-christian victors.

Best wishes,


Pete

spin

Constantine received advice from a bishop from Cordova called Ossius. He was the convener of the first Nicene Council and supported the trinitarian view, so one would expect that to be the view supported by Constantine.

Eusebius in a letter before the Nicene council expressed decidedly Arian-like views of the relationship between god and christ (as seen in this letter, or this one which criticizes Alexander, the bishop who Arius was in conflict with). Not oddly, after the Nicene council he started making more trinitarian sounding noises to show that he was toeing the line.

Here's how Alexander saw the Arians in Alexandria a year before Nicea:

They revile every godly apostolic doctrine, and in Jewish fashion have organized a gang to fight against Christ, denying his divinity, and declaring him to be on a level with other men. They pick out every passage which refers to the plan of salvation, and to his humbling himself for our sake, and then they try to deduce from those passages their own impious assertion.

The argument is about the substance of christ and his relationship with god.


spin

J-D

No, I am going to argue that the existence of pagan satires of Christianity is irrelevant to the points actually in dispute.

J-D

This is Pete's preferred approach--to empty the head and then imagine. I prefer to be guided by the evidence. Pete's empty-headed imaginings are entertaining, but they are unsupported by evidence.